AbstractIn order to determine brain structures involved in processing of rhythm and
melody, cortical DC-potentials were recorded from the scalp of 19 professional
musicians during perception and imagination of rhythms and during
analytical, creative and mnesric melodie tasks. For the rhythm tasks, subjects
listened to simple or complex rhythms or to temporally unstructured
sustained tones. Subsequently, either imagination of the rhythm perceived
previously or no specifie cognitive task was assigned. For the melodie tasks,
subjects listened to a sequence of four notes and subsequently were either
to reverse the sequence or to compose a new continuation. In the third melodie
task, the initial segment of a weJJ-known melody was presented and
had to be continued.
During acoustic stimulation, abilateral increase in brain activity predominantly
over frontal and parietal brain regions occured in all tasks,
irrespectively from the acoustical material presented. Imagination of
rhythms yielded a significant activarion over posterior temporal regions of
both hemispheres. Mental reversal of a melody caused the most pronounced
activation, especially over parietal areas, probably due to visualization
as a cognitive strategy. The creative task caused the lowest brain activation
and elicited an unexpecred lateralization to the left, though we expected
creativity to be a right hemispheric holistic-synthetic process. The
only task which yielded a right-hemispheric lateralization was the mnestic
task, supporting the view of right temporal structures involved in long term
storage of music.